About Us

Parks provide local communities with somewhere green, somewhere to play, to experience sport, to walk, run, exercise, and socialise. They can become a focal point for a local community.

They also play their part in the health of local environment with the potential to enhance bio-diversity.

Community action

With local councils experiencing reduced budgets the quality of our parks can suffer. Thankfully communities are looking inward for solutions. They are increasingly organising to look after themselves….and their green spaces.

Friends of Manor Park

Friends of Manor Park was set up in the summer of 2017, by a group of local residents to protect and improve Manor Park for the whole community. Friends of Manor Park may have started with small steps….but its ambition is to make the park something the community can be proud of.

A park for the local community

We aim to ensure that the interests of the broader local community are put first where decisions about the future of the park are concerned.

We want to ensure that our park can fulfill its potential as a place to:

Promoting the park

We want the community to make the most of Manor Park – promoting the park is an important part in this process. We run an active Facebook group, and send regular emails to our members, and have recently launched this website.

Resident power

Our first volunteer day in October 2017 had nearly 60 local residents helping out picking litter, clearing back overgrowth around our seasonal pond, and restoring an area of wooded copse. The latter was subsequently planted up with 2,500 bluebells.

If you’d like to get involved in the Friends group in any way – whether joining in at one of our volunteer mornings, helping with a fundraising project, or as part of the committee we’d love to hear from you. Just email team@ourmanorpark.org.uk

Our supporters

We received seed funding from Kingston Council, and have received a couple of further discretionary payments recently. We have been extensively supported by the Environment Trust, a local charity, who have been instrumental in helping us set up our conservation activities, in particular by Elliot Newton. Idverde, the park contractor, has been very supportive of our work. We’ve also been well supported by local residents and local businesses. See Our Supporters page for a full list of supporters.

Join us

Friends of Manor Park is an association of its members. If you’d like to become a Friend – you can do so simply by filling in a form on this website. There is a small annual subscription, which is used to help run the Friends group, and our activities. Join now.